Following back every person who follows you, as well as every one who Tweets to you or mentions you in a positive way is the easiest and cheapest way to start engaging an individual. And that’s what this entire social universe is all about.

I can’t count the number of times I have engaged (as a customer) a brand like a hotel, airline, or restaurant with a question, suggestion, or compliment only to not have them follow me back after our initial exchange was finished. They missed out on a great opportunity for a customer to feel valued.

Why would you not follow them all back? Are you worried that it’s too many people to read through in your stream? You will never watch your whole stream anyway – you will be searching for specific words, hashtags, or getting alerted to mentions of you.

The only ones you might want to skip are those who appear to be robots or selling a certain number of followers for money. But even for those, what harm does it cause?

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As we’re winding down the summer and gearing up for a big retail season, I thought I would share my presentation from Franchise Social Media Camp (FranCamp) from back in May. The topic was leveraging social platforms for Franchise systems.

One slide (#6) that lead to some good discussions with attendees is the view of social platforms compared to your franchisees’ stores. Think of it as a map. What platforms are you using as roads to get to other platforms? And, more importantly, what’s the route to get foot traffic in the stores? Are you sharing links on Twitter to draw consumers to an app on Facebook for coupons that drive store traffic? Are you using Google+ or Facebook start a discussion and then sharing video that lives on YouTube that has a great call to action? There are many more combinations than there are platforms! Remember, some channels may be a better or faster route for your customers than other routes.

Last week I guest-hosted the monthly Tweet Chat of the Young Professionals Network. This is a very smart and active group of young PR pros affiliated with PRSA Chicago. The topic was career advancement in the PR 2.0 world, which naturally lead to some discussion of privacy on Facebook. I suggested we continue the privacy discussion somewhere … so let’s do it here!

I suggested to the YPN crowd that as PR, Communications, and Marketing professionals that their social channels should be public, transparent, and open to communicate with anyone.

To be very clear, I am not suggesting that your profiles and passwords be turned over to your employer. There’s a big difference between posting publicly and letting an employer access your private messages! If an employer asks for your passwords, run fast! You don’t want to work there.

So what do I mean by being transparent on your social channels? Think of yourself as your own brand. Keep your Facebook profile open and tell your story in a way that clients, employers, and business connections would find appealing.

But what about those drunken college photos that you want to post? Get over it. No one cares. If you must share old pictures with your friends, send them via email or text. To whom, as your own personal brand, are you trying to appeal? Potential clients and employers? Or someone you partied with a few years ago?

Facebook is currently your most valuable way to connect with any business contacts. I’ve heard many young PR pros argue that they don’t want to Friend their boss, a client, or even a journalist / blogger on Facebook. If that’s your bottom line, I would suggest a career outside of Communications.

And, go all the way with transparency. Don’t rely on “friends of friends”-only posts, or trusting Facebook privacy settings, which fail more often than you know.

So let’s hear it! Are you marketing yourself publicly or staying private?

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FranCamp‘s participants have spent the past few days continuing the great conversations on Social Media Marketing for Franchises. Here are the slides from my presentation on Twitter Tactics including 10 Best Practices for Brands. Please comment with any questions!

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Many people used Facebook for a quite a while before using Twitter. For many, this may have created a misunderstanding that Twitter works the way Facebook works: you post content and people with whom you’re connected will see it in their feed. Sure, it can work like that (and does for those who follow only 100 or so people). But here’s the little secret that none of your followers will tell you…

How Twitter Really Works:

1. You post content and none of your followers read it.

What?!? They don’t read it!?! At all?!? Hold on, it’s about to make sense.

2. Then, when anyone, follower or not, searches for a name, keyword, topic, or hashtag, they see your content.

So when we all say great content is key, we’re not kidding. High quality, high value, interesting content – with an attractive headline or catchy wording – is much, much more important on Twitter than your number of followers. Remember, all of those followers aren’t really reading everything you write. Sure they say they are, but Tweeps are nice like that.

More to think about: RTs not only matter, but also perhaps are the most important thing besides quality of content. We used to think about RTs as a great way of your content getting shared into new groups of people and communities. But, no one is reading all of your followers’ Tweets either. Or your followers’ followers’ Tweets. But, once again, it’s all about search. If anyone searches about your topic and sees multiple RTs pop up with your content, I’m betting that it will get read and your links will get clicked more often than if it only shows up once.

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As a person immersed in social media, one thing I encounter on a regular basis are people who are unfamiliar with Twitter. There are usually two kinds:

The Twitter Virgin: These are people who have never been on Twitter. They’ve heard about it, maybe they have looked at the site, but they don’t have an account nor a clue about what it’s all about. They may be a little technophobic or they may just have not gotten around to it yet. A common phrase from a “TV” is “Why would anyone care if I’m on line at Starbucks or going to the gym. And what do I care if other people are?”

The Twitter Quitter This person has actually set up an account, tweeted a couple of times, and then dropped off the map. They didn’t have much to say and they didn’t get much back to make it worth their while. So they simply stopped tweeting or paying attention.…….
…….

…
Both of these types can be people who either use Twitter for business or personal use. Regardless of their potential motivations for Twitter, they just don’t get it. But often, these people continue to hear about Twitter and many of them want to get on the bandwagon… or back on the bandwagon, in some cases.

It’s not always easy to describe Twitter to someone unfamiliar with it. Ever try explaining a hashtag to someone? It usually starts out something like… “It’s a word with a number sign or the pound symbol in front of it… with no spaces.”

I usually try to start with the benefits of Twitter, like the wealth of information and news that is available on Twitter. Whether it’s news about world events like an earthquake or an election or maybe just the latest celebrity gossip or breaking sports news.

Or perhaps I’ll focus on the marketing and networking opportunities. There are countless amounts of people just waiting to be engaged. These can be potential customers, fans, employers, employees or new friends. I’ll also touch on the advantages of monitoring the Twitterverse for mentions of significant keywords, like your name or brand name

But this article is not meant as a Twitter tutorial. I just wanted to give you a little advice if you are curious about Twitter. To borrow a famous catch phrase: JUST DO IT!

No, this is not a sneaker commercial, but the fact remains that the only real way to learn about Twitter is to do Twitter. You don’t have to start off as a content generating machine. Just get on there. Start by signing up, surfing around and following some people. Follow your friends, favorite bands and celebrities and your favorite companies. If you have a smart phone, install a Twitter app.

Send some tweets and do some retweets. It can be as simple as commenting on your favorite show, a 140-character review of a movie or restaurant. (Maybe tweet from the line in Starbucks, just to see what it’s like.) Over the next few weeks, read a couple of articles on Twitter basics. Ask your “social media” friends about it. Learn how to search Twitter and set saved searches on your phone app.

I guarantee that after a while, you’ll start to get it. You’ll start to sift through the noise and find the value. You’ll even start to understand hashtags.

So what are you waiting for? It’s free, it’s not rocket science and Twitter doesn’t bite. Twitter may or may not be the right tool for you in the grand scheme of social media, but you’ll never know until you try.

Jack Campisi is a Sr. Account Director and Social Media Consultant atEngage121. He is also the co-host of The Purple Goldfish Project and the MRA Hot Seat video podcasts. Twitter: @jackcampisi

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I won’t pretend to have some secret formula for Social Media ROI for franchises or any other types of organizations. I’ll leave that to the software companies who have recently popped up and discovered how huge the franchising industry is and want to build your Facebook page…

What I will tell you is this: you need to measure Social Media activity against your bottom line.

Is there a correlation? Is SM making an impact on sales, leads, customers, or your other most important metrics?

Is Social Media Making an Impact on Your Sales?

If Social Media engagement is increasing your numbers, then keep going!

If not, then you need to do one of these four things:

1. Increase Social Media activity

2. Change Social Media tactics

3. Improve the content

4. Stop using Social Media

I don’t advocate #4, but it may be the right thing for some organizations. Let’s focus on the other three.

1. Increase Social Media Activity

How often are you engaging in conversations with consumers on Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn and all of the others? How often are you updating your blog(s) with something other than marketing materials and ads?

Too many organizations rely on the Field of Dreams method of social media places: build it and wait for them to come. Sure there are 600 million users of Facebook, but how many actually run to your fan page once a week?

Best Practice: Post engaging content to your pages three times per week to set a cadence.

2. Change Social Media Tactics

Maybe you’ve been posting to a Facebook Fan Page but getting no conversion of fans to customers. Perhaps your targeted consumers aren’t “living” on Facebook; they may be more apt to engage you on Twitter, a blog, or a LinkedIn group. You must cover all bases and try all avenues to find your community.

Best Practice: add a new platform or channel every 60 days for the rest of 2011. And, try setting up individual Fan Pages, profiles, or blog sites for each store, location, or franchisee.

3. Improve the Content

Is there value for others? Or is there value in this content for only you and your organization?

Here’s a good test: Take a quick look right now at the content on your blog(s), Facebook pages, or Twitter account. Is it all press releases, announcements about your company, promotions, and broadcasts about products and how you’re better than the other guys? Guess who’s going to engage with you over this content? No one (except your co-workers and maybe some current customers who are being kind).

Best Practice: include marketing content in one out of every ten posts. The other nine will draw consumers into the conversation about the industry, lifestyle, or other information in which they see value.

A challenge that arises after starting your own Facebook Fan Page is creating a continuous stream of content to drive traffic to your page. Many organizations have plenty of good info to share with current fans and customers, but struggle to regularly provide a reason for new consumers go to a new Fan Page.

One fast and easy solution is to create a poll. There are two good reasons why the social web is filled with polls: a poll’s topic can attract targeted users and the act of voting creates an instant sense of participation in a community.

Polls and surveys may be used as much more than a magnet to a site. Many use the power of consumers’ instant opinions as a fast and low-cost alternative to focus groups for product development. That’s a fantastic use of polls when you’re comfortable with the sample size, validity of questions, etc. But for now, I want to focus on a quick traffic-driver without having to consider the valid research methodologies needed to make sound business decisions about products.

For this exercise, let’s create a very simple poll that will drive potential fans, friends, and customers directly to your Facebook Fan Page. You can do this using Facebook poll widgets. I’m using the FANlet app developed by my firm,Engage121. I use the FANlet for four simple reasons:

1. It is the easiest thing in the world to use!
2. The creation and results are instant.
3. During creation, it automatically creates a tweet that goes out through your Twitter account with a link directly to the poll.
4. Clicks on that link are automatically tracked on your FANlet evaluation for instant and ongoing measurement.

From Engage121’s “Speak” page, I choose FANlet.

Begin writing a question and multiple-choice answers. My poll asks parents what’s the most enjoyable cartoon for them to watch with their kids.

After choosing POST, FANlet asks if you would like to Tweet this link to the poll via your Twitter account. Choose YES!

A check of my Fan Page shows the poll is up and already drawing readers.

On the Evaluate page of Engage121, notice that this poll can be added to our FANlet tracking. Not only can we track votes, but we will be able compare these votes with your website traffic or any other metric you pipe into Engage121.

If you are a managing Social Media marketing or PR and would like me to further walk through the above steps, reach me here:

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I’ve participated in, spoken at, and attended several social media and public relations conferences and roundtables in the past year and the same question comes up to each speaker at every session: What’s the future of social media?

The answer lately has always been MOBILE. I think we can all agree on this.

I continue to add, though, that the second question should be: what else? And the answer is LOCAL.

What do I mean by local? Well, you are always local. And if I’m near you, I’m local too, right? To quote Buckaroo Banzai: “No matter where you go, there you are.”

The mobile users of social media are growing daily. They are not sitting at home or in the office thinking about your brand anymore. Those users are at your locations and want to connect, shout, check in, and tell stories about your brand. Even more, they want to tell stories about your brand specifically at the 123 Main Street location in Anytown USA.

PR Pro’s have a short window of opportunity to take advantage of mobile meeting local. Without proper promotion of what’s happening at your (or your client’s) local outlets, stores, offices, franchisees, or dealers, you are missing the intersection of Social, Mobile, and Local.

So, you’ve already set up Facebook fan page, a Twitter account, and a blog for your brand. Now you must do three things:

1. Set up individual fan pages, Twitter accounts, and blogs for each location.

2. Engage customers (or potential customers) at the local level via any platforms on which they are conversing.

3. Share their content with the rest of your community! A bit of content from a customer regarding the 123 Main Street location of your brand is much more powerful than anything else you can create!

The true power of local PR is delivering results and achieving business goals not by just Tweeting about the brand on a global or national level, but also by keeping friends, fans, and customers informed about events happening at each outlet, store, location, or community.